| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Man against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson: "Sure I never took you for a mouse, John Gorham;
All you say is easy, but so far from being true
That I wish you wouldn't ever be again the one to think so;
For it isn't cats and butterflies that I would be to you." --
"All your little animals are in one picture --
One I've had before me since a year ago to-night;
And the picture where they live will be of you, Jane Wayland,
Till you find a way to kill them or to keep them out of sight." --
"Won't you ever see me as I am, John Gorham,
Leaving out the foolishness and all I never meant?
Somewhere in me there's a woman, if you know the way to find her.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: night.'
I told him I was not much afraid of such accidents; and at any rate
judged it unwise to dwell upon alarms or consider small perils in
the arrangement of life. Life itself, I submitted, was a far too
risky business as a whole to make each additional particular of
danger worth regard. 'Something,' said I, 'might burst in your
inside any day of the week, and there would be an end of you, if
you were locked into your room with three turns of the key.'
'CEPENDANT,' said he, 'COUCHER DEHORS!'
'God,' said I, 'is everywhere.'
'CEPENDANT, COUCHER DEHORS!' he repeated, and his voice was
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: moments when I have my doubts. Perhaps it would be better not to
sketch a single line. I ask myself if I ought not to grasp the figure
first by its highest lights, and then work down to the darker
portions. Is not that the method of the sun, divine painter of the
universe? O Nature, Nature! who has ever caught thee in thy flights?
Alas! the heights of knowledge, like the depths of ignorance, lead to
unbelief. I doubt my work."
The old man paused, then resumed. "For ten years I have worked, young
man; but what are ten short years in the long struggle with Nature? We
do not know the type it cost Pygmalion to make the only statue that
ever walked--"
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The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from United States Declaration of Independence: --Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now
the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.
The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated
injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment
of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts
be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary
for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate
and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation
till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended,
United States Declaration of Independence |
